


Doomed from the Start

by Weevilo707



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: I'm Sorry, John is not gay Karkat, M/M, Onesided, Pining, Unrequited Love, although still with it in mind, and wait for the world to end, set before caliborn's 'masterpiece', so very onesided, they're still cute though, two dorks watch movies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3793354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weevilo707/pseuds/Weevilo707
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of these day's you'll learn to stop setting yourself up for failure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doomed from the Start

You didn’t expect to still like him after three years. 

You didn’t expect to _ever_ like him, since that was the god damn opposite of how your feelings started out as. Or fuck, there weren’t any feelings to begin with and good god who the fuck were you even trying to kid here? You had the biggest fucking black crush on him since the first moment you saw his irritating mug. It didn’t last long of course, because you are not an idiot and also John is kind of hard to hate when you get to know him. 

But just fuck. Fuck everything about this and him and his stupid adorable pitiful face and his stupid adorable pitiful laugh and his stupid lack of personal space and just fuck all of it deep into the bowels of some ugly ass horrorterror never to see the light of the green sun again. 

It’d been what, three days now since they had all met up again? It was a waiting game at this point, and fuck were you tired of waiting. Everyone else seemed pretty god damn peachy about it to you. They were all getting the chance to interact with some new faces without threat of death instead of just the same shitty ones from the past three years. 

You were starting to get antsy though. Yeah John and Jade and the new humans all seemed cool with you so far, but fuck they might just be putting up with you. And then the whole thing with John was just god you can’t deal with that right now. Dave probably told him you was nervous about this meetup and that was the only reason he was being so nice. It didn't mean anything.

“Karkat! What’s up?” You barely fucking manage to keep yourself from flinching at his voice, because this was not what you needed right now. On a scale of what you need, ten being this god damn game finally ending and one being a personalized death laser from Lord English himself, John was probably at around a two or a three. Maybe a four. 

“Fucking nothing apparently, since you won’t tell anyone what fucking crapshoot of a plan you have us all waiting around for ‘the right time’ I quote,” you snap at him, sounding harsher than you meant to. Thankfully John doesn’t seem to notice, just giving you a large smile and fucking giggling, the ass. 

“Hehehe, don’t worry about that okay? It’ll happen when it happens and we should all just relax and have fun with each other while we still have the chance,” John says. Something about the way he worded that rubs you the wrong way, but you can’t put your finger on what.

Before you can question him on it he’s grabbed your hand and is trying to drag you back towards where everyone else is. You pull away from him as if he burned you, refusing to move from your spot. John turns back to you, a pout already on his face and you were aware that you’re being kind of a dick right now but fuck, being around so many god damn people wasn’t something you’re used to anymore. Being stuck on a hunk of space rock while hanging out nearly exclusively with Dave fucking Strider and the Mayor for the last year of the journey will do that to a person. 

“Aw, come on,” he whined, and you just roll your eyes at him.

“I’m perfectly fine here, go hang out with your weird clone familiar units,” you tell him, hoping he’ll just leave you alone. He doesn’t seem to take the fucking hint though and sighs dramatically, leaning against the stone pillar by you. LoMaX wasn’t the worst planet you’ve ever been on, although that wasn’t much to say about any planet seeing as you accidentally went to LoWaA once. 

“Karkat, you’ve been acting weird lately,” he says, not sounding accusatory, but concerned. Why the ever shitting fuck does he have to be so god damn nice all the time?

“How the hell would you know? In case you don’t remember, we basically met three shitty days ago,” you snap at him, this time the smile on his face dropping at your words, replaced with a more sheepish one. 

“Heh, yeah I guess you’re right. I just kind of still count those three years as us being friends, even though we only talked for like a day before then. Sorry, that’s probably dumb of me,” John apologized, looking embarrassed as he spoke and oh _fuck_ that. Now you feel like a complete tool even though you did absolutely nothing wrong. He should not be able to do that to you.

“Look, no fuck it’s fine. I’m just not in the fucking mood to deal with a lot of people right now, alright,” you tell him. Relief surged through you when his smile came back, and you wanted to punch yourself in the face for that. 

“Alright then, let’s hang out!” he said happily and the urge to punch shifted from your face onto his.

“What the ever loving fuck did I literally _just_ say? Holy shit were you listening at all or were you too busy imagining I don’t even know, flutterbeasts flying around in your empty as fuck thinkpan?” you sputter, John laughing before you even finish speaking. 

“Relax, I meant just us,” he explains, and you’re quiet for a moment, mainly because you have no idea what the fuck to do. Being alone with John was not something you were capable of dealing with at the moment but if you said no he was going to get upset and you were pretty sure you could deal with that even less. 

“What do you want to do?” you concede with a sigh, John’s smile growing even wider and that should not do things like that to your digestion sac. 

“Oh! Oh no! Karkat!” he yelled, eyes going wide and startling the fuck out of you.

“Holy fuck, what?” you ask, having to take a step back when John pretty much jumped into your personal bubble.

“We haven’t watched any movies together yet! Oh gosh this is so bad we need to fix this immediately!” he explains, grabbing your arm once again and starting to drag you to rectify this horrendous mistake. You let him for a bit, telling yourself that he was pulling your arm not your hand, stop putting meaning to shit that wasn’t there. 

After a moment you do force yourself to pull away from him, once again causing John to look back at you, this time in confusion. 

“Where the hell are we even going?” you ask, John seeming to think the question over before answering. 

“I don’t know. I guess we can go sit on that rock over there,” he points towards one of the flat red stones that litter this land, and you shrug and follow him over. John’s already sat down and was busy pulling his laptop and a DVD out of his sylladex by the time you get situated. 

“Okay, you’re gonna love this one! I know you like romcoms which are usually dumb, but this one is cool! It’s about these two CIA agent buddies, and after one mission where they kill the brother of a guy who makes these huge weapons, they’re made to do desk work for their protection. But then, they both end up meeting the beautiful Lauren, and through some wacky hijinks end up dating her at the same time! When they find out, they start using all their super cool spy equipment to sabotage each other, and-”

“John fuck can we just watch the shitty movie already?” you cut him off, even though so far this does sound pretty decent to your surprise.

“Opps, yeah sure thing,” he says, starting the movie without any other hesitation. 

It turned out a lot better than you expected, although good god that ending was horrible.

“This is why your shitty species needs quadrants! Those two are moirails and the whole dynamic would have been so much more interesting if they went and flipped black for each other like it was teasing the whole god damn movie. There is not a god damn thing you can say to convince me otherwise,” you tell him, John groaning at your assertion. 

“No man, they’re just total bros! Leave your weird alien romance in your weird alien movies, okay,” he tells you, and you can help but feel a small stab at that. 

Well, at least you weren’t propositioning black with him anymore. Or fuck, you weren’t proposing anything, you weren’t an idiot. John’s smile sure was making you feel like one, though. 

“I’ll have to show you some of my ‘weird alien movies’ and prove to you just how wrong you are,” you tell him. 

“Yeah right, more like prove how wrong _you_ are,” he says and you roll your eyes at the incredibly lame comeback. “Do you have one?” he’s asking next, and for a moment you don’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

“Have what?”

“One of your weird alien movies, duh! I thought you wanted to school me on romance dude, well, I’m waiting,” he says and good god did he really have to word it like that? Without saying anything you pull out the first movie you can find from your sylladex, deciding afterwards that it would just have to do.

“Yeah okay, this one is decent enough. If you had given me some fucking warning I would have been able to present the most magnificent masterpiece of interwoven psychosocial relationships and situations, but then again something of that magnitude probably would have broken your primitive thinkpan so it might be best that we start off with something a little simpler anyway,” you tell him, and John just rolls his eyes at you.

“Start the movie Karkat,” he says, and you just manage to keep yourself from punching him after that quip. 

Your movie is a bit longer than his, and infinitely better, even if his was kind of decent. John is surprisingly quiet throughout most of the movie. You’d expected him to be asking questions every other god damn minute, but instead he just stares at the screen, a look of concentration on his face. 

(You don’t spend more time watching his face than the movie you _don’t_ )

Once it ends John is quiet for another moment before finally speaking.

“What just happened?” he says, and you don't manage to stop yourself from twitching at the question.

“What the fuck do you mean what just happened?” you snap back, and John turns towards you now, looking completely lost.

“I mean like, what was that? Like, okay, those brown and green ones were going back and forth between red and black right? Why did they end up in the buddy square?” he asks, and good god he was such an idiot sometimes.

“Any argument you have is immediately fucking erased by the fact that you called moirallegiance the ‘buddy square’ I hope you realize that,” you tell him, and John rolls his eyes and groans at you.

“Oh bluh, you know what I mean! And then like, what about the time the green one cheated with that blue guy? That wasn’t even addressed afterwards!” John complained.

“They were flipped red at the time and the fling with the blueblood was black, were you paying attention? That’s not cheating,” you explain, John groaning again. 

“What no! That can’t be right.”

“Okay yeah, I’ll admit that was kind of pushing the boundaries of what most trolls would consider acceptable since they were vacillating so quickly. Do I need to remind you though that you just showed me a fucking movie where the entire premise was based off the fact that the woman was dating two people at once? They couldn’t even be in different quadrants since your species doesn’t have any,” you tell him, and John seems to back down a bit at that. 

“Oh yeah I guess you’re right,” he says and you roll your eyes at him. Fuck, someone this dumb should not be this adorable. You honestly weren’t sure what you were going to do about it. 

You had been hoping a bit that by spending time with him you’d realize how much of an idiot he was and get over this shit, but that had not happened. Fuck, it was the god damn opposite it was getting were you were so fucking screwed. 

“This was really fun though, we should do it again sometime before we have to start up again with everything again,” John was saying, managing to break you out of your thoughts.

“I still have no fucking clue when that’s going to be but sure why the fuck not,” you say because you really, really do want to do this again. It's probably better if you don't but you don't care. 

“We’ve still got a bit more time, so don’t worry about it,” he says, and you sort of wanted to ask him more about this plan. He’d refused to tell you before though, you doubt he’d change him mind now. You almost didn’t want to know, it gave you a bad feeling and you just wanted to pretend that things were fucking alright for the moment. 

“I really like hanging out with you Karkat. I know I didn’t get to spend as much time with you as Dave or Rose or any of the other trolls did, but I just really want you to know that I still think of you as one of my best friends,” John tells you quietly, a strange tone to his voice that you can’t place and good god this kid was going to be the death of you. Screw English and the Condesce and all of the hellhole that was paradox space this kid was going to be what does you in in the end. 

You don’t even know what to say to that and John turned from where he was staring down at his shoes to offer you a shaky smile. His eyes shining with weird clear tears that he wasn’t letting fall . You have no idea what just happened or what was on his mind to make him act this way but whatever it was, it needed to fucking stop before you found it and torn it to shreds for doing this. 

Your god damn think pan must had short circuited at that moment because the next thing you comprehend is John pushing you away from his face (when did you get there oh god what did you just do fuck fuck _fuck_ ) the tears on his eyes gone and his face twisted into a look of absolute confusion.

“Uh…” is all you manage to say, not even able to word the strings of lovely curses running through your head.

“You… still have that hate-crush on me?” John asks cautiously, and you could punch him off of this rock but that really would have given him the wrong idea. 

“No,” you manage to force the word out. John continues to stare at you in befuddlement for a while longer before a look of realization washes over him.

“Oh. Oh! Um, oh god, wow,” he stumbles out, and good god you change your fucking mind. You could really fucking use a personalized Lord English death blast right about now. Fuck, there was no way paradox space would be so kind to you. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” you finally manage to get out. John was shaking his head though, a nervous smile on his face as he spoke.

“No, no it’s fine! I mean um, it’s just, you know I still don’t like, um, like boys right? That’s not really something that uh, changes for the most part, in people,” he fumbles out and good god you feel like such a fucking idiot. What the hell were you thinking? Oh right, you _weren’t._

“Yeah, yeah I mean, fuck I’m so fucking sorry,” you end up saying again, not seeming to be able to form any other words. 

“Karkat I said it’s fine! It is fine, right? Like, we’re okay? We’re still friends right?” John started asking you, starting to sound worried now. You finally manage to shake your head and get something out besides ‘I’m sorry.’

“Yeah, I mean, if you even want to still be friends,” you mumble out, almost afraid of his answer. Why the fuck would be want to stay friends with you after this? To both your relief and surprise John started nodding his head as soon as you finished your sentence.

“Of course I still want to be friends! I didn’t know if you wanted to,” he says, and you frown at that.

“Why the fuck would I have a problem with still being friends?” you ask, and John just shrugs sheepishly. 

“Because I just rejected you for like, the second time,” he explains, and you roll your eyes at that. 

“That’s not your god damn fault you dope, I never should have done anything in the first place. If I _ever_ make a move on you again you have my full permission to punch me in the fucking jaw,” you tell him, John laughing a bit at that. 

“As long as you don’t take that as me hate-flirting with you or whatever,” he jokes. 

“I won’t,” you tell him with certainty, although you did not plan to ever fuck up like you just did again. 

John gives you another smile, and then his arms are around you, pulling you to his chest in a hug. You feel your whole body freeze, not sure what to do or what you are even supposed to do. After a moment, you allow yourself to relax the slightest bit, still not daring to hug him back or anything like that. 

A few more seconds and John pulls back, his smile full force once again. You attempt to return it, even the slightest bit, and you’re pretty fucking sure you failed on that front, but John doesn’t seem to mind. 

“So, one more movie before we head back to the others?” he asks, and you shrug, really not feeling like heading back right now anyway. 

“Sure, I don’t have anything better to do. You pick,” you tell him, John shuffling through a small pile he pulled out of his sylladex for whatever one he wanted. He didn’t bother explaining what this one is about as he puts it in, and you can’t help but be thankful for this. You just can’t concentrate on listening to anyone right now, even him.

You are such an idiot. You’d think after all this time you’d manage to get a handle on this shit and stop embarrassing yourself. At least there was no more fucking wondering. He wasn’t interested in anything and you weren’t surprised. What the hell have you ever done to deserve something going your way for once?

One of these days you’ll learn to stop setting yourself up for failure. 

At least, you really fucking hope so.

**Author's Note:**

> I had an urge for unrequited Johnkat, and this is the result. Thanks so much for reading and please let me know what you think, feedback is lovely.


End file.
